The object of the study is the popular struggles for free public schools and its democratic management. To analyze these struggles we have addressed two segments of workers: the teachers and the poor workers living in the suburbs. The 1980s was a boundary in popular struggles for redemocratization of the country. Then these struggles have taken different paths in different areas. In relation to the struggles for education, we found evidence that, even in different social and professional, the struggle of education workers and workers living in the suburbs came together for the same proposition: a persistent defense of free public schools. The teachers’ struggle was still in favor of the conquest of the democratic management and against hierarchy and bureaucracy in schools. The study addressed the following issues: What drove such unlike workers to reach such similar formulations for education? What are the specificities and convergences in the struggle for education undertaken by these workers? Was there unity in the struggles of these different workers, at least a minimum equivalency movement, or the struggle of teachers ran outside the suburban workers’ struggle? What referrals were used in these struggles? The study aimed at analyzing the struggles of workers for public and free school and for democratic management, between 1983 and 2010, in the State of Paraná, Brazil. We sought, concerning to the specific objectives: to analyze the processes of struggle for education of teachers and poor suburban workers in the state of Paraná; to check the political process in the struggle for establishment of direct election for school directors in Paraná; to analyze the implementation process of the school councils in Parana public schools; and, finally, to examine the workers’ struggle for conquest, for access and improvements in public schools in a particular... (Complete abstract click electronic access below)